My Official Retirement

I know I have been threatening for years to retire from the Halloween Party Scene, but tonight has brought me to the end. I am too old and faint of heart to continue. Some of you may sigh and say, it is about time. Others might wonder what could have possibly caused this tragic separation of Aunt Ruth and her favorite holiday. For those of you who say, it is about time, I say, don't read on. For those of you who are curious as to what happened, I will tell you.

I knew there was a problem when during a rather amusing pillow fight I had the worry that someone was about to get hurt. I quickly halted the excitement and brought the gang down a few notches. Now mind you, I have always worried about such things and I feel I have kept the children safe over the years, but this was just the start.

Henry requested a traditional game of hide-and-seek. I was hoping to avoid such traditions this year, so I put him off by saying we had to wait until it got dark. It no sooner got dark than there Henry was reminding me of the promised entertainment. I set the rules and helped Henry count. Chase was very inventive and crawled to the end of his sleeping bag. When he got eerily still I started to worry that he had suffocated. (Maybe I watch too many shows like CSI and SVU) It turns out he was probably just falling asleep.

During the same round the big event happened.

The lights were out, like they are during all good games of hide-and-seek. Josh had tried to shove his sixteen year old body between the chair and the table head first and had stopped half way. It didn't bother me until he was "found" and he didn't move. All number of kids were shaking him and telling him to get up just feet from where I had been sitting the whole time. Still no response from Josh. I began to panic, but didn't want to alarm the children, so I told him to get up. Still no movement. I told him he was scaring me while hoping he was just joking, (he is a lot like his Uncle Joseph). I told the kids to pull his pants down. I thought for sure that would get him up. Well, four and five year-olds don't know that you wouldn't just pull someone's pants down and so I panicked when I started to see skin and there still wasn't any movement from Josh. By now there was no hiding my fear when I called a halt to the derobing. I could just imagine my horror of explaining that I didn't know he was dead until we pulled his pants down. At this point I will tell you that Josh is lucky I did not kill him. Makayla said she was about to cry because she thought he was dead also. He never let her get close to pulling his pants down. Josh had decided he wanted to trick us and when he heard my order to pull his pants down he failed to take into account that the four year-olds would proceed. Long story short, my heart cannot take such close calls to failure and so it is with great regret and much sorrow that I must announce my retirement.

Lucky for all the grandchildren, Landon has offered his home as the site of the next family Halloween Party. I say this is a grand idea and honestly I think it is a winner. Maybe the party could rotate among the families so everyone could experience the excitement first hand. I always wondered who would throw the cool parties for my children and now I know it is all of you. What do you think?

Pictures to follow at a later time. NO!, not of this incident.